Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology is a landmark international text focused on the transformative power and beauty of Indigenous story and storytelling. Co-edited by Emeritus Professor Jo-ann Archibald, Professor Jenny Lee-Morgan and UTS researcher Dr Jason De Santolo, the book houses new and groundbreaking storywork research by Indigenous scholars, activists and practitioners in Australia, Canada and Aotearoa, New Zealand.
The text explores Indigenous storywork as a tool to reveal deep historical insights into the ongoing impacts of colonisation on people, their families and communities. It also opens up robust collaboration potential for decolonized research engagement with Indigenous pedagogies, practices and expressions of culture, ensuring that Western research methodologies no longer dominate or fail to acknowledge or include Indigenous cultural practices as profound pathways of knowledge transformation.
In the chapter ‘The Emergence of Yarnbar Jarngkurr’, De Santolo argues that Indigeneity in the academic world has been silenced by Eurocentric processes inherent in mainstream Western research methodologies. Yarnbar Jarngkurr (talk~story) is a strategic renewal framework to revitalise culture practices and shield Garrwa people and their homelands from the impacts of mining in the Northern Territory.
De Santolo posits Yarnbar Jarngkurr as a creative methodology that has emerged from Indigenous homelands to support scholars, community researchers, creatives, and activists to work in complex Indigenous knowledge spaces. As part of his work, De Santolo created video content that embodies Garrwa storytelling laws and protocols, demonstrating how moving images can help disseminate Indigenous storywork, songs and practices in a broader self-determining research context.
Decolonizing Research, Indigenous Storywork as Methodology, edited by Emeritus Professor Jo-Ann Archibald, Professor Jenny Lee Morgan, and Dr Jason de Santolo, was published by Zed Books in 2019.
